Project Examples
"Myth in America" UM Media Wiki, Dr. Gregory Staley
Purpose
To facilitate collaboration and participation among groups of students.
Description
In Spring 2008, Dr. Gregory Staley's Classics 370 class created a UM Media Wiki on Myth in America. The class consisted of 35 students who were divided into teams of seven, each team responsible for researching and writing a portion of the wiki. During the course of the wiki development, Dr. Staley asked each student to record his or her history of contributions to the wiki in an activity log so that he could assess individual student participation. Technical support was provided by OIT, who created the UM Media Wiki account, and UTAP student Sherry Carbone, who assisted with teaching students how to build and use a wiki.
Results
Though overall successful in encouraging student collaboration, the Myth in America wiki was not without its share of difficulties. Many students had trouble learning how to correctly input reference information and upload appropriately-sized images onto the server. Although students were shown how to correct these problems, some were baffled by the learning curve of the project. Dr. Staley reflects:
"This was the first time I tried a wiki and on the whole I liked the concept [...] In course evaluations students did not rave about this format, but I think that they were frustrated by some technical issues involved with the wiki program. I hope that the program can steadily be improved [...]".
Conclusion
The technical issues which Dr. Staley refers to could be in part due to MediaWiki's relatively steep learning curve.For future assignments, Dr. Staley could now use ELMS's TeamsLX, a wiki software recently purchased by OIT that is not only easy-to-use but also breaks down wiki participation by each student in order to facilitate grading. Since Teams LX is integrated into the ELMS environment, both student and professor need only to log onto their ELMS account to access the wiki.
Using Camtasia to Create Instructional Videos, Dr. Allen Stairs
Purpose
To create videos to walk students step-by-step through proofs and calculations in a logic course online.
Description
Dr. Stairs received a CTE Improvement of Instruction Grant to record a series of instructional videos for his online Winterterm PHIL 170 Intro to Logic. Because Stairs wanted to show students real-time how to work through these exercises, he chose the screencapture software Camtasia , which recorded his computer screen while he went through the exercises step-by-step in Microsoft Word. While typing the problems out in Word, he used a microphone to simultaneously record his directions and comments to students. After the recording was finished, Dr. Stairs then embedded the resulting video into ELMS to share with his students.
Results
Because an online class lacks the face-to-face interaction of an in-class lecture, Stairs claims that the course “ […] would have been impossible to do without the videos.” He received positive feedback from his students, who agreed that the video lectures were helpful and that they liked being able to replay the material as many times and as often as they needed to understand the concepts.
Conclusion
Dr. Stairs recommends the Camtasia software, citing its “very short learning curve” and “out-of-the-box” ease of use. The recording process, however, can be much trickier. Stairs advises faculty interested in recording their own videos to treat the video as a “live lecture”, instead of a polished, high- quality production. Setting out with the intention of creating a flawless recording will only provoke self-consciousness while speaking and slow down the process, making it too tedious and time-consuming for faculty with busy schedules.